During the 1920s, the Reverend Doctor J. Frank Norris was a leading light of the fundamentalist movement. As pastor of the nation's first megachurch, the First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, he preached to a congregation of 10,000. As a publisher and radio broadcaster, he reached tens of thousands more. And, in 1926, he shot an unarmed man to death and was tried for murder in one of the first "trials of the century."

David Stokes's Apparent Danger: The Pastor of America's First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920s is an absolute delight. Stokes does a masterful job of telling the tale of a hellfire and brimstone preacher's hunger for conflict and notoriety, the faithful followers who loved him, and the detractors who dismissed him as a charlatan or worse. Stokes's account of Norris's murder trial and the accompanying media circus is as enthralling as any episode of Law and Order. Set against the backdrop of cultural change and a nascent conservative backlash, Apparent Danger is a well-done history that is entertaining and relevant. ––Kelli Simpson

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